The unimportant news thread

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Thanks Greg and Drojulus!

PD

[drogulus]

     Another thing about video encoding is I don't like to fuss with subtitles and some files/disks have a bunch of them. So what I do is remove all of them unless there's a forced track, one for foreign audio. That one I burn to the file so it will play on any device anywhere.

[greg]

Speaking of computer issues, I'm diagnosing computer issues so I can finally get my workflow going again for my music production... and music will be the most important thing I create, most likely, so kinda important...

Bought a new power supply, $200... but thinking it's incompatible with my old video card, possibly? And also it seems that wasn't the cause of the issue...

The root problem I was having I've finally narrowed down to only 2 likely things, but there was another possible problem causing another problem which started the whole thing... basically that probably might have been the CMOS battery, which I replaced. The voltage it was showing on my multimeter was exactly .1 volts above the number where it starts going bad, so if it's that close, on the fence, how do I even know for sure that was the cause of the problem? (resetting clock)

Having to breadboard the motherboard to work on this... fun weekend. 

[greg]

Well... replacing the CMOS battery really does fix the clock on Windows. 

Too bad the extra issues I have now make zero sense. The "no video output" issue was apparently improperly seated RAM? But when I started having that issue, I hadn't even touched the RAM. That's fixed now, but after hooking up the graphics card again, I can't get that to work, only onboard graphics are working, and that is unacceptable.

[drogulus]

Well... replacing the CMOS battery really does fix the clock on Windows. 

Too bad the extra issues I have now make zero sense. The "no video output" issue was apparently improperly seated RAM? But when I started having that issue, I hadn't even touched the RAM. That's fixed now, but after hooking up the graphics card again, I can't get that to work, only onboard graphics are working, and that is unacceptable.

     I'm hopeless with the physical side of fixing things. I'd probably take it out and put it back in. If I got a black screen I'd curl up and die, then I'd shut down and plug the monitor into the mobo HDMI and reinstall the graphics card drivers and make sure the card was enabled in Device Manager.

[greg]

     I'm hopeless with the physical side of fixing things. I'd probably take it out and put it back in. If I got a black screen I'd curl up and die, then I'd shut down and plug the monitor into the mobo HDMI and reinstall the graphics card drivers and make sure the card was enabled in Device Manager.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking into... thing is, when trying to connect the GPU to the PSU, nothing will start... if GPU is inserted but not connected to the PSU, the fan will spin like crazy...
that's where I left off today... still leaves some room for more testing, at least...

[greg]

People Who Like Dark Humor Are More Intelligent, Study Finds

https://www.studyfinds.org/study-dark-black-humor-intelligence/


Wasn't this a widely shared study a few years ago? Seems familiar...

[drogulus]

     When I bought my PC 2 years ago I installed a graphics card I chose because it was the most powerful one that didn't need a power connector.

     

     

[greg]

Whoa, didn't know there were GPUs that didn't even need a power connector. That would make things simpler. Though probably none of the really good ones have that feature.

Mine is the GTX 760, was great, though not the best when I got it 6 years ago.

So I'm almost there... got my GPU back up and running with my new PSU, and everything is fine... except nope. The fan noise is insane now, it's about to take off to orbit.

So how did I solve 2 of the 3 issues I was facing during my repairs. Absolutely no idea what the solution was, since I tried multiple things each time... seems that's the only way to fix anything- reading forums about one thing at a time to try to understand what's wrong (and therefore what the solution is) seems to not do the trick, you gotta screw around with everything at once.

And no, my GPU never had this fan problem before...

[drogulus]

     The GTX 1050 Ti benchmarks better than yours and doesn't need a power connector.

     

[greg]

     The GTX 1050 Ti benchmarks better than yours and doesn't need a power connector.

     

Thanks for the suggestion. The whole day is gone and no solution, not sure what else to try. It does detect when the cables aren't connected, the HDMI is plugged into the GPU (instead of motherboard), and the programs that let you change fan speed won't even allow me to change it (apparently a common problem with no software-related solution). Besides the crazy fan noise everything is totally fine. (also my PSU, new one and old one, are both 650W which is well over what is needed).

I might end up updating the graphics card, and something better that also doesn't need power connectors would be perfect. So looking into this...

[greg]

Ordered this:
https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-gtx-1650-super-ph-gtx1650s-o4g/p/N82E16814126357?nm_mc=otc-hatch&cm_mmc=vendor-nvidia

The GTX 1650 Super is basically the best GPU you can get under $200 new. It's funny that the original 1650 was a complete bust (bad deal for the price), but then they release this "Super" version which is actually good.

(there's a comparison tool you can use, and I've ran it to prove this statement... and plus, it just outright embarasses my current 6-year old GTX 760 GPU). 

It does have one connection for PSU, but not sure if it's needed or not... regardless, it's just one 6-pin connection, thankfully (my current GPU has an 6 pin AND an 8 pin, so it increases the variables of what could be the problem with more connections).

Getting it in a few days, hopefully this will do the trick.

[Todd]

Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown mistakenly included in BET Awards 'In Memoriam' segment

[drogulus]

Ordered this:
https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-gtx-1650-super-ph-gtx1650s-o4g/p/N82E16814126357?nm_mc=otc-hatch&cm_mmc=vendor-nvidia

     I saw that one after my last comment. I see its Passmark score is 7800.

[drogulus]

     I now have 4 8TB HDs in my system. One is for general use, and the 3 others are for Movies, Collections, and a separate one for 2160p, so I won't mistakenly include them when loading a portable drive for someone who can't play them, and for other reasons I haven't thought of yet.

[greg]

     I now have 4 8TB HDs in my system. One is for general use, and the 3 others are for Movies, Collections, and a separate one for 2160p, so I won't mistakenly include them when loading a portable drive for someone who can't play them, and for other reasons I haven't thought of yet.

That's quite the amount of space. Still waiting for my GPU... Covid delays, maybe.

[drogulus]

     How "Starship Troopers" Aligns with Our Moment of American Defeat

     Why should a film have to align with moments for people and film critics to understand what it's about? I can think of reasons to dislike Verhoeven films that don't involve being stupid about them.

[greg]

That's quite the amount of space. Still waiting for my GPU... Covid delays, maybe.

Looks like it's working 100% with the new graphics card.

But some things remain totally incomprehensible to me. The problem with the old one was the fan noise when I put it back in (didn't have that issue before I took it out like a week before, why would that happen suddenly?). The new GPU has no fan noise.

At first, when I installed the new GPU, hardware-wise it looked good (only one connection and displayed a helpful white light when it was connected properly, and turned red when the connection was out). But after booting, no display in both monitors. Screw around a bit, try it again with exact same connections, and one of my monitors works, but in the wrong resolution. So I use Windows for a bit and then let it sleep for a while so the screens just go black. Then I wake up my PC and suddenly both screens are on, at the desired resolution, for no comprehensible reason at all.

My suspicion is that me removing the lock screen might be causing unpredictable and bizarre issues?

Also, the new CMOS battery is still holding the correct system date (which was initially the ONLY problem I was having), so that's good.

[drogulus]

     My Radeon 550 is a mid-level card that suits me since I don't play demanding games. It also has a hardware video encoder built in that's faster than the one Intel has in its CPUs. Qualitatively they are about the same, which is not as good as software encoding, though I compensate for that by trading off some of the speed by bumping up the quality settings. If I wanted to be able to do real time software encoding (24 fps for a movie) I'd need a gargantuan CPU to do it. With my Radeon I can double that and keep quality with the CPU I have (i7 8700).

[JBS]

It's possible there's a black hole in our own solar system.
(But if it's there, it's only a baby black hole for now.)
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-scientists-planet-primordial-black-hole.amp